Stories and comments from the author's musical and political life: by John F Goodman

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Tag Archives: cow farts

A couple of years ago cow farts were the story when the media claimed all that expelled methane was a big factor in global warming. Then they said the methane was mostly owing to cow burps, not farts. Then they blamed cow manure. Then some idiot came up with a device to capture the 300 liters of methane a cow produces each day.

The backpack manages to capture and collect the gases emitted through the cow’s mouth or intestinal tract via a tube inserted through the cow’s skin (which the researchers claim is painless). The gas is then condensed and ready to use to provide power for the farm on which the cow lives . . . .

Nobody asked the cows, of course, and look at Bossie’s expression here. Ruminants like cows, sheep and goats—the grazers, some of our best animal friends—are really getting dumped on.

These thoughts were occasioned when I awoke this morning, a little flatulent and wondering how much humans contributed to global warming by their farts. Quora reports that the world population of “human beings collectively release about 73 metric tons of methane and 1000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day just by farting.”

This they call a trivial amount, “roughly equivalent to 1000 people flying from New York to Los Angeles.” God, who would want to be in that plane? Two hundred or so people emitting gas in a typical airplane cabin is bad enough, one of the truly dread aspects of flying.

Now, there are at least two angles to this cow story that trouble me. One is how the media responds to the methane problem with clever and cute stories about cow farts. People giggle and then forget about them, and the crisis of global warming goes to the back page again.

Then there are the advocates for climate action who advise us to eat less beef. Many claim that converting forests to grassland for grazing is another harmful effect of our cow-hungry culture. California Governor Jerry Brown last year went after cows and dairy farms bigtime with a bill to cut methane emissions from dairy cows and other animals by 40% by 2030. “The Air Resources Board can now regulate bovine flatulence, as long as there are practical ways to reduce the cows’ belching and breaking wind.” Good luck with that one, Jerry.

I lived on a farm with Angus cattle for three years in Maine before I came to Mexico. The herd produced a lot of stinky manure and the best steaks you ever ate. They were wonderful, mostly passive neighbors who had nobody to speak up for them.

Climate change is the most serious problem facing humanity (and cows), but I’m still eating steak, tonight in fact. You can leave a comment and tell me what’s wrong with that picture.